Crime, Law, and Social Control

The concentration in crime, law, and social control analyzes rule making, breaking, and enforcement. As criminology and criminal justice scholars, we explore the social construction, regulation, and consequences of crime and deviance, including official and unofficial policing, court-processing, and punishment. Our faculty offer unique expertise in Critical Criminology, Punishment and Society, and Law and Society. Critical Criminology examines interpersonally harmful acts as well as social harms such as sexism, racism, classism, heteronormativity, imperialism, and forms of organized hatred that rigidly divide our world. Critical Criminologists also examine how the unequal enforcement and application of laws maintain the race, gender, and class status quo. Law and Society looks behind “law on the books” to see law and “legality” in everyday life, and it explores the lived experience of law by tracing the gaps between what we think law is/does and what it actually is/does.

Core Faculty

Katherine Irwin, David Johnson, Ashley Rubin

Related Courses

  • SOC 218 Introduction to Social Problems (3)
  • SOC 231 Introduction to Juvenile Delinquency (3)
  • SOC 232 Introduction to the Sociology of Punishment (3)
  • SOC 332 Sociology of Law (3)
  • SOC 333 Criminology (3)
  • SOC 335 Survey of Drugs and Society (3)
  • SOC 336 Deviant Behavior and Social Control (3)
  • SOC 337 Criminal Justice Organizations (3)
  • SOC 374 Law, Politics, and Society
  • SOC 431 Advanced Criminology & Juvenile Delinquency (3)
  • SOC 432 Punishment & Society (3)
  • SOC 433 Analysis in Law and Social Change (3)
  • SOC 435 Women and Crime (3)
  • SOC 438 Prisons (3)
  • SOC 445 Analysis in Gender Violence (3)
  • SOC 446 Gender Violence Over the Lifecycle (3)
  • SOC 495 Topics in Sociology (3)